However, I discovered that the first class was going to lose time due to a scheduled fire drill, so I had to curtail things appropriately, since it was unlikely that I would have any meaningful time with the kids after the fire drill ended. (I was right about that.) My goal for that first class quickly changed to a little bit of review of something we did before and one fun new exercise. The second class did start outside, and I’ll cover what I did there later in this blog entry.
| It’s A Very Good Day | Sing song as students entered |
| For the first class, I did exactly as planned - I started singing the song as students started to collect on the carpet. I sang through the song twice before most of the students were seated, and then when it came to the break during that second time, I asked the students to ask my “Why?” - only a few did, and I suspect that a lot of the students had forgotten about this particular song and its mechanics. I switched the song to sing about running through the wind, and then again when I told the students to ask me why, this time a few more students mustered the strength to ask. I then talked about how it was going to rain tomorrow, and I sang through the song, changing the lyrics again to “jumping in the rain” since I noted to the students that I’ve seen many of them jump in puddles when it was raining. At “Why?”, more students, but still not a vocal majority, responded, and only a few knew to sing “‘cause it’s a rainy day.”.
for the second class, I used this song as the students returned into the classroom after our outside activities, and it went pretty much the same, although with even less energy. I guess they had too much fun outside. :) | |
| Who Stole The Cookie From the Cookie Jar | Get students used to the response and answer |
| This was one of the activities that remember most vividly from my childhood school music classes, and to be honest, I really haven’t used it much during my 6 years of teaching through MfM, for whatever reason. Well, this time I really wanted to try it out. I first talked about how I liked cookies as a kid, and how I would sometimes eat more than my share. I also told the students that sometime I would hear a booming voice ask “Who stole the cookie from the cookie jar?” At that point, several students said that they knew what “this” was.
Introducing Cookie Jar to the students works best with an informed adult helper, and before the class, I prepped the other parent in the room with their lines and what they should be saying. And so, I then said that “[other parent name] stole the cookie from the cookie jar”. Since the parent knew what to do, the subsequent exchange went pretty well - no prompting required. I then had the parent choose someone else as the purported cookie thief, and from then, I did find myself prompting both the students’ general responses and the chosen student. I encouraged the individual student to respond in a loud voice, but no child was particularly loud. The first class, when doing this, had a really good time with this, and what I discovered is that the girls picked mostly girls; the first student chosen was a girl, and so the class nearly exhausted the entire complement of girls before choosing the first boy, and so since the class was having such a good time with this (after all, they love being loud as a group with “yes you!” and “then who?”), I allowed this exercise to go through nearly the entire class. There were a few students who appeared not so eager to be chosen, so eventually I encouraged the last chosen student to pick myself, and of course, I admitted to taking the cookie. For the second class, I didn’t want to run out of time, and the students naturally picked me on the early side, so I stopped the exercise. I don’t think they were as comfortable with the answer/response aspect of the exercise (after all, we only covered 6-8 students), but they did have fun with it. | |
| I Am A Pizza | Teach song, try different starting pitches |
| I continued with the food thread with the students, and I asked them “if you were a food, what would you be?” (I suppose I’m prepping them for job interviews!) The first student in the first class answered “pizza”, which was something I was hoping to hear later, so I kept asking students what they wanted to be. There were a lot of eager answers, and in the second class, I had to recapture the students’ attention with a rendition of “Show me”, as they got a little chaotic with all of their answers. When it was time to continue, I asked the students if they remembered the answers from their peers, and for most cases, the students did, which made me happy that they were at least paying enough attention to each others’ answers. The second class never produced “pizza” as an answer, so I had to offer that pizza was my second favorite food, next to cookies, of course.
We sang the first stanza via echo, and then I spent a little time teaching them to sing that last line together (e.g. “I am a pizza… ready to go”). It’s actually a great line to repeat as it’s pretty close to a descending scale. At this point, I wanted to get some small==high/big==low reinforcement, so I pulled out a tone bell set at the C above middle C. I (or in the case of the first class, the other parent), played the note, and I had the kids hum to the note. I then used it to start the song, and we sang it through; I had to remind the students to sing that last line together again. Next, I pulled out another bell for G under the starting C that we just used. I then asked the class what differences they saw (without playing the bell), and then I went ahead and played it. I then got the students to hum along and we sang through. G happens to be a bit low for most kindergarteners, and so they didn’t sound that great, but they did continue to sing along. Next up was the E above the original C, and eventually put all three tone bells together in order, and we played the simple arpeggio. I then had the students hum the E, and yes - we tried singing along once more. E is rather high for me, and so it was probably a little comical to the students to have me sing so high. At this point, the bells for the fire drill rang for the first class, so I had to stop the class at that point. For the second class, we had a little more time, so we sang through Victor Vito (more food songs!) just to use up the last minute. | |
| Here We Go A-Riding On A Train | Review song, add instruments |
| I had the second class start outside, around the circle by the recess area, but not too close to the recess area so that the students felt compelled to go climb. There was actually a puddle of water at one end of the circle, so as the students walked around the circumference, I planted myself on the puddle so that no kids got anywhere near the spot. (After all, I was going to sing to them about jumping in rainy puddles later!) With everyone in the circle, I reviewed the various parts of the song by recapping the different sounds and having the students echo the sung parts.
I then brought out various instruments that the students saw before - cymbals (I couldn’t find triangles this time for some reason) for the “ding!”, tambourines for “all aboard”, sand blocks for “chop”, and rhythm sticks for the “clickety-clack”. I didn’t want to flood the area with instruments, so I alternated instruments for students, which turned out to be overly cautious; these students would have been ok with 100% coverage of instruments. As a result, the students played a bit softly; being outside really makes the sound dissipate. We went through the song stage by stage, and I prompted the appropriate group of students (by instrument) to come in. In an exercise like this, if students played out of turn, I really didn’t mind; I was more interested in making sure that the students with the right instruments were playing at the right time; rests were optional. After one full iteration, I had the students move to their right so that those who didn’t have an instrument now had one. We had an odd number of students, and so there was one student who got an instrument twice, and that caused an unexpected level of stress on the students who complained that X already had a chance. I know that the students enjoyed playing the instruments, but I wasn’t so sure that they all really got the hang of playing on a certain “part”. I didn’t do this with the first class, and so I’ll have to re-think this a bit for the first class, as I do want to give that class the same opportunity. | |
| Bow Wow Wow | Teach Activity |
| With all of the students already in a circle outside, I wanted to try to get the students to do some sort of circular “dance” involving partners, and Bow Wow Wow is one of the easiest ones that I know of that does this. I first had the students echo the few lines to the activity. I then had the students all pair up, but then I realized that it would be a lot better to demo the movement; so, I, along with the other parent helper, showed the students when to move (e.g. the 3rd line). I then had the students practice this while singing the very short song. We practiced this twice, and I then added the jump (again, demo’ed with the other parent for the students first). The students didn’t find the demo terribly fantastic, but then when we tried this as a class - laughter broke out.
This turned out to be a lot of fun, and students couldn’t get enough of it. After about 5 iterations, I had the students stop and point to their original starting location on the circle, and it was another bit of eureka for them to discover that they were working their way around the circumference. Anyhow, we probably had about 10 iterations before I had to call it and bring the kids back inside. | |
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